For the first time I actually entered my car in a
car show. I entered the Texas All
British Car Day event, which was actually two days. The first day
was a Gumball Rallye, and the second day was the car show.

I have attended many cars shows over the years, always as a
spectator. But when I heard they had a category for Modern Mini
I could not pass up the chance to join in the fun with my 2004 Mini
Cooper S. That's my car on the far left of the panoramic above, and the
white Triumph on the far right happens to belong to the person that was
my navigator during the Gumball Rallye (Thanks, Mike).

I posted a series of pictures here.
There are some more panoramics, as well as a lot of group shots to give
you an idea of what the show was like.

On this page I will show you some of my favorite cars... or just
favorite shots from the show. Remember, as always, you can click on the
images for a higher resolution image (though now that I have an 18 MP
camera I set the higher resolution to 1280 x 853, because the full
resolution of 5184 x 3456 would result in very large file sizes.)

Enjoy!

This
car represents the car I wanted to go out and buy after the event. I
have always liked the body style of the Triumph TR6. And the best way to
get it is in British Racing Green with a tan interior. These cars are
affordable (check out my Classic Car Watch
column this month), and can provide a lot of fun driving when the
weather is nice. Perfect for an event of this kind and for those
weekends you just want to get away.

This
was an unusual car (to me). This is some kind of MG Midget.
I must confess I don't know much about these cars to say more than that.
But what I do know about is that little power adder under the hood... a
belt driven supercharger. That's right, good old fashioned American
ingenuity under the hood of this tiny British sports car. I also saw a
Triumph TR6 with a supercharger as well at the show. Very cool.

This
is a Sunbeam Tiger... the same car that Maxwell Smart drove in some of
the Get Smart shows in the sixties... and I believe the same as the car
they used in the recent Get Smart movie with Steve Carell. For those
that don't know... this has an American V-8 in it... similar to the
Shelby Cobras, just without all the publicity.

Below are four examples of
Classic Minis. I wanted to show you some of the diversity of
these cars. The car of the left is the one I would like to
own... British Racing Green. I talked to the owner and he put
the roll bar in to add some safety when driving this car on
the street amongst a mass of 2-1/2 ton SUVs. The red one
has a folding sunroof, the white one is a pickup, and the green
one is a Woody!

Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed these pictures. Now head over to my
Classic Car Watch column for this month
to see how this car show inspired my choices for that column.